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The parrot is not dead..he's only sleeping

Written by Professor David Flint AM

In denial, the Eurocrats are saying the EU Constitution is not dead, notwithstanding its overwhelming rejection by the French. It does not matter that the French are saying No for reasons different from the British. The French say the EU Constitution will bring in an era of unbridled free markets: the British fear the opposite-that it will restrain them

The EU Constitution is dead, like John Cleeses parrot, but the Eurocrats will not accept this. Just as our Australian republicans refuse to accept the rejection by the people of their preferred republican model.

They hide behind the pathetic excuse, endorsed recently by Paul Keating, that the referendum asked the wrong question. Surely he can do better than that to justify his more than $200,000 a year pension.

Had the Europeans adopted this Constitution, it would have had no effect on ours.

It may well have demeaned the British Crown, the British Parliament and of course, the British people-but it would not have affected the entirely separate Australian Crown. Only someone who had not read the High Court decision in Sue v. Hill would have thought otherwise.

But as Peter Cavanagh writes, it is interesting to hear the completely different interpretation of this result to the almost identical figures in the Australian Constitutional referendum.

In France 45% to 55% is reported as overwhelming! And the figures are of such a magnitude that no other referendum or discussion is likely to get up.

Here in Australia some journalists and a few politicians feel that the republican vote was close and worthy of endless revisiting.

Well, as Peter Cavanagh says, the old saying has always been, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. I do not for one minute think the British would have approved the EU Constitution - even if the French had approved it by a margin of 90 per cent! The British are far too politically sophisticated to fall for that.

But that is their business, just as it was their business to enter the Common Market. If the British had been exposed to the arguments that our Founding Fathers ensured would take place and be properly ventilated in a referendum, the British would never have entered the Common Market. They would have stayed with us, and kept their markets open to our agricultural produce.

They would not have had to do what their politicians doomed them to do-subsidize first the French, and then the new entrants .But the British politicians persuaded the people, without a proper debate, the sort of debate our Constitution requires, that there was some advantage in being in Europe.

Now every other power in the EU wants to take away the rebate Margaret Thatcher struggled to establish. The rebate still makes the British the second largest contributor to the EU funds after Germany, and only now is France, almost as wealthy as the UK, becoming a net contributor.

If the British had a provision in their constitution like our section 128, they would have been exposed to these arguments. Australians should remember, once again, the glorious contribution our Founders made to protect us from the delusions and lies of some of our politicians, the elites, the intelligentsia, the media and all those others who would take away our heritage.